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Akshaya Mukul | Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

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Join us for a conversation on Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya , between author Akshaya Mukul and Assistant Professor of Hindi Literature, Rahul Bjørn Parson . _________________

DATE: Thursday, October 13, 2022 TIME: 5pm Berkeley | Calculate Your Local Time VENUE: 341 Dwinelle Hall (Located on Level F) This event will also be live streamed on the Institute's FB page: ISASatUCBerkeley _________________

ABOUT THE BOOK Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ is unarguably one of the most remarkable figures of Indian literature. From his revolutionary youth to acquiring the mantle of a (highly controversial) patron saint of Hindi literature, Agyeya’s turbulent life also tells a history of the Hindi literary world and of a new nation-spanning as it does two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the building and fraying of the Nehruvian state.

Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya’s public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of the nonconformist poet-novelist. Mukul reveals Agyeya’s revolutionary life and bomb-making skills, his CIA connection, a secret lover, his intense relationship with a first cousin, the trajectory of his political positions, from following M.N. Roy to exploring issues dear to the Hindu right, and much more. Along the way, we get a rare peek into the factionalism and pettiness of the Hindi literary world of the twentieth century, and the wondrous and grand debates which characterized that milieu.

Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover features a formidable cast of characters: from writers like Premchand, Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad and actor Balraj Sahni. And its landscapes stretch from British jails, an intellectually robust Allahabad and modern-day Delhi to monasteries in Europe, the homes of Agyeya’s friends in the Himalayas and universities in the US. This book is a magnificent examination of Agyeya’s civilizational enterprise.

Ambitious and scholarly, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover is also an unputdownable, whirlwind of a read.

SPEAKER BIOS Akshaya Mukul is an independent researcher. He is the author of Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya and Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India . The latter won every major non-fiction award in India on its release, including the Crossword Book Award, Ramnath Goenka Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Atta-Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Prize and the Shakti Bhatt Award. An alumni of Delhi University, he has been a journalist for 24 years and worked at The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Pioneer and the Asian Age . He has written extensively on Indian politics, education and culture and has contributed essays for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century , edited by Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza, and A Functioning Anarchy? Essays for Ramachandra Guha , edited by Srinath Raghavan and Nandini Sundar. Akshaya Mukul is the author of Mukul is the recipient of the Homi Bhabha, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and the New India Foundation fellowships.

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Akshaya Mukul’s biography of Agyeya captures the life of one of Hindi literature’s most iconic practitioners

Writer, rebel, soldier, lover: the many lives of agyeya is set against the cultural landscape of the 20th century and explores the life of the iconic writer, who was one of the mainstays of the nayi kavita literary movement.

Those of us who grew up across north Indian towns and cities in the 1980s, attempting to unravel the contradictions of the self, often found ourselves divided when it came to the work and life of Sachchidananda Vatsyayan, or Agyeya (1911-1987). Prolific and provocative, he was regarded as not only one of the most prominent Hindi writers of the 20th century but also an enigmatic cultural figure who animated the otherwise complex and dreary — or, at least, that’s what it appeared to us then — Hindi literary scene. Despite all his literary prowess and achievements, our young selves sometimes found it challenging to embrace Agyeya fully, for his intellect, poetry, and writings dared to bare the complexities of the human mind, the inner contradictions, and the tussle between social identity and self.

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My quest with Agyeya’s writings in the past and now has often taken me to the pioneering work of CH Cooley — the American sociologist who propounded the theory of looking-glass self, the tug of war between perception and reality, the general questions around the sense of social self and identity. I, however, reserve this extension of my interpretation to a later time and straightaway deep dive into Akshaya Mukul’s biography of Agyeya, which attempts to answer most of the questions that linger around his legacy, placed in a larger context of colonial and post-colonial history, the subjectivities of which find relevance in today’s public sphere.

Writer Rebel Soldier Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya is a veritable doorstopper and makes for rewarding reading, illuminating the life of Agyeya and the world around him. Through a critical lens, Mukul has delved into a vast wealth of papers and archival material and attempted to decode the enigma surrounding Agyeya. One need not be a fan of Agyeya’s work or interested in the minutiae of his life to understand this biography, for his work, for the most part, is set in the social and literary history of India in the 20th century.

A simple reckoning with Agyeya or any of his contemporaries from the 1980s is difficult at the outset. The title of the book is a window to the complexities of Agyeya the artiste’s life. After all, an artiste is a constantly evolving, multifaceted, multi-layered “idea” and not a fixed entity, and rarely embodies monochromatic, cast-in-stone rigidities. Agyeya resonated naturally with these complexities emerging from within a single idea or thought, which makes his work fulfilling to curious minds trying to break into the concepts of freedom, liberation, and critical thinking.

I was reminded of poet Allama Iqbal at various points while reading the book. He, too, has been a subject of long-running debates for the radical breakthroughs emanating from his work. Some writers are more consistent than others, but consistency is hardly a virtue or a measure of literary worth. Inconsistencies and contradictions are, on the other hand, intellectual and organic, as they indicate inner struggles, trials, and tribulations, that sometimes provide an index of changing circumstances. What makes Mukul’s book compelling is that Agyeya is not the “ideal” subject, nor has Mukul made any effort to smoothen the wrinkles and present him as one. The four identities in the title of the book correspond to Agyeya’s various lives as a writer, an anti-colonial revolutionary who spent several years incarcerated, an anti-fascist who participated in World War II , and an individual who longed for, yet was rarely able to, find freedom or love.

His constant pursuit of the inner self was a result of the extractive nature of relationships and the transactional associations he often witnessed in his day-to-day life that deeply troubled his sense of empathy and sensitivity. Mukul describes how on a train journey to Madras, he defends a school teacher being subjected to unwarranted remarks by a fellow passenger. Similarly, some of his earlier texts reflect a tussle between perception and reality, for instance, the dichotomy in his and societal perceptions of youth and old age.

As I read the book, I found that Agyeya the writer is all-encompassing and all-embracing. Mukul’s work presents a delightful snapshot of Agyeya’s life as a student and a scholar who travelled and continuously shaped his ideas. Most of all, the overarching theme that emerges from the book is how Agyeya is widely regarded as the trendsetter of the Nayi Kavita movement. His contributions remain seminal, some of the most inventive and innovative, as he continued to evolve the world of Hindi literature with modernist thoughts.

I have often wondered why Agyeya intensely focused on the inner lives of his characters and not so much on how they engaged with the outside world. The answer, as Mukul helps us understand, is, perhaps, because Agyeya did not want to preach or assume a didactic, moralising voice when he was riddled with a range of anxieties that he often expressed in his private correspondence. In the then-dominant sociological perspective, Agyeya reveled in the realm of the psyche. This may have helped him resolve (at least symbolically) the several inner contradictions that came to characterise the labyrinthine professional and personal dilemmas of his life. Widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of symbolism, it is for these reasons that Agyeya speaks to the messiness in all of us.

In a recent interview, the 2021 Nobel laureate in literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, said, “I represent me. I represent me in terms of what I think and what I am, what concerns me, what I want to write about… When I speak, I’m speaking as a voice among many, and if you hear an echo in your own experience, that’s great.” Similarly, Agyeya, to me, remains a writer resonating with the more profound sense of self — much more than any other identity imposed on him or expectations set around him. To me, he celebrates the idea of freedom and liberation, in theory, thought, or expression. As I stand better acquainted with him after reading Mukul’s excellent work, I’ll heed the poet’s own words of advice that appear at the end of the Preface of his much-celebrated 1978 Jnanpith award-winning collection of poems, Kitni Navon Mein Kitni Baar (In How Many Boats, How Many Times): “Kavitayein aapke saamne hain. Iske aagey woh hi prasangik hain — Kavi nahin (The poems are before you. From this point onwards, only they are relevant — not the poet).”

Agyeya was heavily misunderstood and misinterpreted during the Cold War period. To the scholars of the future, Mukul’s biography will be beneficial as he analyses him with no such prejudices. His life, reflections, and creativity are a larger commentary on the historical backdrop of the time and weave a narrative helpful in understanding the relevance of colonial and post-colonial history today.

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Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

The many lives of agyeya (from the award-winning author of gita press), akshaya mukul, select preferred format, buying options, paperback / hardback.

“An outstanding literary biography” AMITAV GHOSH

“Mukul writes beautifully, and brings to life a man who has often been misunderstood” BENJAMIN MOSER

“This book is a remarkable contribution to the world of Indian letters: ANNIE ZAIDI

Sachchidanand Hirananda Vatsyayan ‘Agyeya’ is unarguably one of the most remarkable figures of Indian literature. From his revolutionary youth to acquiring the mantle of a (highly controversial) patron saint of Hindi literature, Agyeya’s turbulent life also tells a history of the Hindi literary world and of a new nation-spanning as it does two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the building and fraying of the Nehruvian state.

Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya’s public, private and secret lives. Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of the nonconformist poet-novelist. Mukul reveals Agyeya’s revolutionary life and bomb-making skills, his CIA connection, a secret lover, his intense relationship with a first cousin, the trajectory of his political positions, from following M.N. Roy to exploring issues dear to the Hindu right, and much more. Along the way, we get a rare peek into the factionalism and pettiness of the Hindi literary world of the twentieth century, and the wondrous and grand debates which characterized that milieu.

Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover features a formidable cast of characters: from writers like Premchand, Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad and actor Balraj Sahni. And its landscapes stretch from British jails, an intellectually robust Allahabad and modern-day Delhi to monasteries in Europe, the homes of Agyeya’s friends in the Himalayas and universities in the US. This book is a magnificent examination of Agyeya’s civilizational enterprise.

Ambitious and scholarly, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover is also an unputdownable, whirlwind of a read.

Imprint: Vintage Books

Published: Jul/2022

ISBN: 9780670097210

Length : 808 Pages

MRP : ₹999.00

Imprint: Audiobook

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Akshaya Mukul is the author of Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), which won every major non-fiction award in India on its release, including the Crossword Book Award, Ramnath Goenka Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Atta-Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Prize and the Shakti Bhatt Award. Mukul is the recipient of the Homi Bhabha, Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and the New India Foundation fellowships. He has contributed essays to Keywords for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century , edited by Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza, and A Functioning Anarchy? Essays for Ramachandra Guha , edited by Srinath Raghavan and Nandini Sundar.

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Akshaya Mukul spills the beans about author Agyeya in his new biography

Akshaya Mukul talks about the protagonist of his new biography Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya. It is a fascinating study of a multi-faceted man, pieced together using official documents, private papers, and recollections of people he knew.

Akshaya Mukul, who bagged a number of non-fiction awards with his book Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India (2015), speaks proudly and passionately about his new book Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya (2022). Published by Vintage, it is a biography of a man who is remembered not only as a stalwart of Hindi literature but also for his contributions to India’s freedom struggle, and his beleaguered but colourful love life.

Excerpts from the interview:

What, according to you, are Agyeya’s most significant contributions to Hindi literature?

Agyeya came on the literary scene when Chhayavaad (romanticism) was on the decline. He heralded the arrival of Prayogvaad (experimentalism). He is particularly known for the Nayi Kavita movement, which was modernist in style. The Marxists attacked Agyeya for his emphasis on individualism but he did not pay much heed to them. He did his own thing. His creativity flourished during years spent in jail for revolutionary activities against the British.

Do you consider your book not only a biography but also a work of translation? While you have not translated Agyeya’s writing per se, you have brought alive for people who read only/mainly in English the life and personality of a Hindi writer. Your thoughts?

That is an interesting way of looking at my book. I am going to give you a long-winded answer. I hope that’s okay with you. Agyeya was not a typical Hindi heartland author. He was a Punjabi man who spent his childhood and youth in Lucknow, Srinagar, Patna, Nalanda, Madras (now Chennai), Ooty, Lahore, and many other places. He was comfortable with English but he wrote poems, essays, novels and travelogues in Hindi because he saw English as the colonizer’s language. His private papers tell another story. His correspondence with his younger brother, some of his lovers, and his literary contemporaries was mostly in English.

Though he was almost chauvinistic about Hindi, he wanted to be translated into English so that he would be read widely outside India. In fact, his novels Nadi Ke Dvip and Apne Apne Ajnabi , and many of his poems, were translated into English during his lifetime. In addition to this, Agyeya translated a lot of his own poems. I did not want to produce a work of translation but I agree with you that I have ended up deconstructing Agyeya for the English-speaking world. I was lucky to have support from Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, Trisha Gupta and Akhil Katyal in translating some untranslated Agyeya poems for my book.

Your book opens with Kushinagar, the site of Shakyamuni Buddha’s mahaparinirvana and also the birthplace of Agyeya. Did you visit the place while working on this book?

Yes, I did. Kushinagar had a formative influence in Agyeya’s life, especially because his father Hiranand Sastri used to work with the Archaeological Survey of India. Agyeya used to accompany his father on archaeological expeditions. He was fascinated with the sculptures, inscriptions and coins that were excavated from there. When he was a child, some Buddhist lamas had approached his parents because they wanted to adopt him and train him as a monk. It was difficult for them to let go of him. Agyeya was his father’s favourite child. Agyeya spoke about this phase of childhood publicly when he was invited to Kushinagar in the 1960s.

Agyeya studied at Forman Christian College in Lahore. Did you go there for research?

Going to Lahore for archival work is almost impossible because of political tensions between India and Pakistan, and the difficulty of obtaining a visa for research purposes. I relied on the generosity of scholars who live in Pakistan to locate information and fill in some gaps. I checked out archives in Allahabad and Chicago, and I visited Agyeya’s houses in Delhi.

Would you have had a different approach to this biography if Agyeya were alive today?

I would not have taken up this project if I had been asked to write a controlled biography. Yes, he is a colossal figure of Hindi literature from the 20th century but he is also a human being. I despise biographies where men come out with flying colours all the time. I did not want to write such a hagiography. I like to bring out secrets, struggles, foibles and failures.

During Agyeya’s lifetime, Ram Kamal Rai wrote a biography titled Shikhar Se Sagar Tak based on interviews with Agyeya and his contemporaries. It had the makings of an authorized biography. I did not want Agyeya’s stamp of approval or his permission while writing this book. I wanted to treat him as a protagonist, and tell his story as truthfully as possible.

Agyeya’s romance with Kripa Sen is one of the highlights of your book, and it’s great to see you write about her with the same dignity that is accorded to his wives Santosh Malik and Kapila Vatsyayan. How would describe Kripa Sen’s role in Agyeya’s life?

They had a stormy relationship but she made a huge impression on him. When I saw Agyeya’s private papers, I realized that Nadi Ke Dvip is more autobiographical than I had imagined. Their relationship was intense and all-encompassing. Kripa was a passionate woman, and extremely well-read. She was educated in England. She was proficient in Persian and Bengali in addition to English. She moved among the social elite of her time. She was completely besotted with Agyeya. Sometimes, she would write four love letters in a day.

Kripa was a real match for him. If he gave her the silent treatment, she would have none of it. She used to persuade him and compel him to talk. She would not let him walk all over her. They were going to have a child together. She had to abort the child. I wrote about their relationship only because Agyeya never wanted to forget it. If he wanted to hide it, he would not have kept Kripa’s letters along with his private papers even after he got married to Kapila. Excluding Kripa from my biography of Agyeya would have been blasphemous.

Your book also mentions that Agyeya was “emotionally involved” with his cousin, and had some homosexual encounters during his college days. What sources did you use?

My thumb rule was to write an evidence-based biography and avoid gossip at all costs. There is enough material available about Agyeya’s emotional entanglement with his cousin Indumati. His first wife Santosh was outraged when she saw Indumati wearing her wedding ring but later suggested that she was open to living with Agyeya and Indumati under the same roof. Kripa was quite aghast when she learnt about the closeness between Agyeya and Indumati. What I have written about Agyeya’s homosexual encounters is based on the dream journals that he kept, and his book Shekhar: Ek Jivani that draws from his personal life.

Is it true that Agyeya was also a photographer?

Yes, Agyeya loved taking photographs of his lovers, nature, and children. When Gandhiji was assassinated, and his ashes were scattered all over India, Agyeya took photographs to document the moment when the ashes were thrown into the Sangam in Allahabad (now Prayagraj). Apart from being a photographer, Agyeya was also a great cook, tailor and carpenter. He was deeply interested in physics, dance and music. He was knowledgeable about plants and trees. He also made and kept designs of furniture, underwear, and teapots. He had a curious, expansive mind, which was always occupied with something or the other.

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintan_writing

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Akshay Mukul’s biography of Agyeya is a nuanced journey through the writer’s fascinating life

The biography humanises the subject, expands the empathy of the reader, and turns agyeya’s world into a real, pulsating, and authentic universe for the readers..

Reading Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya , Akshay Mukul’s colossal biography of Agyeya, a stalwart of Hindi Literature, was like entering the fascinating world of my literary forefathers. With Agyeya at the center of this socio-cultural and literary cosmos, I got to see intimate glimpses of so many names I have grown up reading passionately but could never meet in person. Mostly because most of these writers were either dead before I was born or were gone later, while I was still years away from foraying into my own reading journey.

Agyeya’s pulsating universe

Right from Premchand to Jainendra Kumar to Phanishwar Nath Renu to Nemi Chandra Jain to Muktibodh to Shamsher Bahadur Singh to Malayaj to Nirmal Verma and Namvar Singh – anyone who has been of some serious significance in the world of Hindi Literature in the decades around independence is there in the biography. For this reason alone, this 800 pages long epic book is an absolute joy to read. My reading experience was an adventure which has left me elated and in daze.

There are scenes of Hindi giants no less than Hazari Prasad Dwivedi taking walks in flower-gardens with Agyeya, discussing plants with the passion of love. And then there are scenes where despite juggling with his own chaotic work-world, a mature Agyeya is making time for getting the PHD submissions of deadline-distressed younger Hindi writers typed in Allahabad. Not stopping here, he is also then proof-reading those submissions and even arranging for a car to send off the younger writer to Banaras, all for the sake of ensuring a timely submission by a junior.

There are scenes where a very young Agyeya, locked in prison as a undertrial for his rebellion against the British empire, is having dreams with explicit sexual overtones. And he is boldly noting down what Mukul calls ‘his nocturnal fantasies’ – out of all places, on the back of his court documents! There are scenes of long and often poignant, correspondences of Agyeya with an astonishing range of people – from Maithili Sharan Gupt to Muktibodh. The concerns that these letters betray give us a rare glimpse into the worries, delusions, disagreements, insecurities and more than often, into the vulnerabilities that marked the lives of some of the most brilliant minds that shaped India.

It is remarkable details like these through which Mukul humanizes his subject, expands the empathy of the reader and turns Agyeya’s world into a real, pulsating, authentic universe for all of us. A vulnerable universe which was often full of a multitude of ironic contradictions and a few significant triumphs.

With the page count of only notes and references running to 200, Mukul has clearly handled staggering amount of research. One can only imagine the challenges of creating this hefty biography largely out of Agyeya’s papers – a massive ‘twenty trunks, few cartons and two almirahs worth of material’. Though the subject himself is often considered a daunting figure in Hindi literature and the endless sifting through his life-papers might look intimidating to some, but Mukul comes across with flying colours.

He has clearly written the book with passion, I could feel the undercurrent of that passion on the pages while reading the text. But what’s remarkable here is that while being at it, Mukul is able to maintain the dispassion and precision of a surgeon. He is empathetic towards his subject but never goes overboard. He is not only sensitive but obsessed with details, sub-plots and side stories – which eventually proves significant in giving the reader a fleshed out and solid reading experience.

Mukul’s nuanced, subtle and restrained approach also comes into play when he is dealing with the many literary and political battels surrounding Agyeya. Be it the allegations around Agyeya being called a CIA agent or him being painted as a reactionary pro-right intellectual – Mukul meticulously investigates through a maze of papers and busts all the myths – but he is never loud and lets facts do all the talking. What moved me most was the way Mukul treats the women in Agyeya’s life. Santosh, Kripa, Indumati, Kapila and Ila – he is considerate, empathetic and has genuinely listened to all of them via reading their papers as well as their circumstances.

A cautionary tale

While growing up in my regular university days circles, I remember being fed on the spiraling narrative of the almost mystical battle between a progressive pro-people Muktibodh and an individualistic bourgeois Agyeya. I used to feel stifled by this constant stress on choosing a side – even before being given an opportunity to read both writers and make up my own mind. It did not took me long to realize that this was a manufactured battle that the Hindi literary world has been dragging on for decades and was now imposing it on the younger generation as well. I always saw this whole thing as sort of a trap which puts readers (and writers) in camps and hence limit them and the possibilities of relating to and responding to literature.

Hence this biography of Agyeya came to me as – what now feels as the authentic back story of the most historical feud in my own extended (literary) family. After years of living through the torture of seeing this boxing and limiting of the lives and works of my beloved writers – I could finally read a fact-based account of how did all this started, to begin with. It was a relief to know that the two writers themselves were sincere and respectable towards each other for large parts of their lives. The section dealing with Muktibodh’s death in particularly poignant and moved me to tears.

The descriptions of the ideologically divided and emotionally fractured Hindi world were sad to read. The constant fighting and the exchange of blistering letters between numerous important Hindi writers of that era, often left me disappointed. It is true that Agyeya was relentlessly attacked by the ‘progressives’, but more than often, he himself showed little to zero restraint in attacking them back.

I read the biography during a course of one week and throughout felt a weird kind of grief while encountering these otherwise sensitive Hindi poets and writers – fighting bitterly among themselves on the pages. This went on even while India was at the threshold of attaining independence. While the whole country was shaking through waves of violence, Hindi writers were fighting among themselves to decide who was progressive and who was not. In this sense, Mukul has created in this biography what I personally like to call ‘a cautionary tale of what not to do’. For the same reason, this can prove to be a crucial read for younger generations.

The women in Agyeya’s life

Kripa Sen, Agyeya’s secret lover from the 1940s, is one of the many feats of this biography. I connected to Kripa so much that I feel I will carry her with me forever. In the book she comes across as a great lover– and here I am not writing the word ‘great’ in a sense of hyperbole. The lover in Kripa has a Sufi heart and which comes straight from the legacy of Meer and Majnu. She was a remarkable woman with extraordinary capacities for sustaining love and the wounds that one sometimes earns while being in love. Hindi literature should be thankful to Mukul for introducing us to Kripa, who would otherwise have slipped through the pages of History.

The sections dealing with the women in Agyeya’s life had an undercurrent of the impending grief which kept hovering over the love. But here, grief was not only limited to the loss of love. As Mukul puts it, “His (Agyeya’s) relationships with women – each of them talented in her own right – tended to be extractive, whether financially or for creative gain.” His constant infidelity with zero guilt about how he was treating the women in his live was painful to read through.

In his book titled Wagner: The Terrible Man and his Truthful Art , American-Canadian author M Owen Lee addresses the historic literary question we all struggle with – How can a seriously flawed person produce true and great art?

I do not believe in moral judgements as my own ambivalence about these sensitive questions often overwhelms me. But still, even if I take a considerate view, the patriarchal and insensitive approach of Agyeya towards the women in his life remains so glaringly evident on the record now, that it’s impossible to ignore. Here too, the biography is a cautionary tale.

Agyeya, the writer

One of my favorite sections in the biography moves around Agyeya and Phanishwar Nath Renu. The most eminent Hindi novelist from Bihar, Renu’s letters to Agyeya are both tender and poetic. During the 1966 drought in Bihar, Agyeya went to report on the ground along with a young and enthusiastic Renu. Meeting common people and visiting villages while reporting in the good old school manner, the two produced some seminal longform reportage for Dinaman magazine. Agyeya called out the administration for the pathetic situation in the state – but he did not spared the public intellectuals of Bihar too.

The most poignant pages of the biography details the last months and eventual demise of Renu – who passed away in April 1977, right after emergency was lifted. Renu was a passionate critique of emergency and was locked in a jail in Bihar for a long time. Later, when emergency was lifted, he was out on Parole. But despite being gravely sick due to abdominal complications, Renu kept ‘raring to campaign for the opposition’. Constantly in and out of hospital, he wanted to delay his surgery till fresh elections could happen and the new government is formed. But before that, he had to be taken to Patna Medical College where he died at the age of 56. While reading this I was overwhelmed with grief – thinking about how much we all owe to selfless writers and public intellectuals like Renu, who risked their lives to ensure that the democratic values of our constitution are not compromised.

On a biography spree, I finished reading five writer-biographies this year. Among all five, Agyeya’s biography is the one which has least number of pages devoted to the writer’s work in fiction and poetry. Hence the book is fittingly titled The Many Lives of Agyeya . Literature was just one of Agyeya’s many passions. As much as it can, the biography provides deep insights into his works – especially on ‘ Shekhar: Ek Jeevani’ . But more often than not, Agyeya is either planning a new magazine, planning for a weekly, heading a daily newspaper or preparing for one of his incessant foreign travels. Besides taking multiple fellowships and long teaching assignments abroad, lecturing around the world and organizing literary events were his big passion. It’s a surprise, perhaps an educational one too – that despite leading such a multifaceted life, Agyeya was able to write and publish as much as he did.

REMEMBERING AGYEYA: WRITER, REBEL,LOVER, SOLDIER

SOURCE: THE WIRE

A SHORT NOTE BEFORE THE READ

The name ‘AGYEYA’ appeared in various news daily as his biography got penned by Akshaya Mukul. 

Sachchidananda Hirananada Vatsyayan (1911-1987) went by the popular pen name AGYEYA, also known as ‘the unknowable’. 

Born in Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh and the son of a renowned archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, he wore many hats. The writer is also credited for pioneering new trends in Hindi poetry, fiction, criticism as well as journalism. Prayogavaad (experimentalism), a movement in modern Hindi Literature; the launch of his own Hindi language weekly ‘Dinaman’; ‘Nayi Kavita’ in Hindi poetry: are all credited to his imaginary output. 

The Indian revolutionary, AGYEYA was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award    (1964), Jnanpith Award (1978) and Golden Wreath Award for poetry. 

Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive biography sums up multifaceted Agyeya’s life as ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.’A well-researched colossal biography of 565 pages depicts the controversial Hindi writer as we peep into the darker realities of his personal, political as well as literary life as we enter the body and soul of another individual.  

Book Review | Remembering Agyeya: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover

For Agyeya, freedom and self-respect were values on which he never compromised. His biography penned by Akshaya Mukul affirms this notion.

Akshaya Mukul has named the comprehensive biography which sums up the various facets of Agyeya’s life as  Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya.  The book has been published by Vintage, a part of the Penguin Group. The book is enormous not merely because it relates a factual, contextual tale of the many lives of a stalwart writer; it is humongous in size as well with a total of 565 pages of the biography and an additional 200 pages or more of reference material.

I believe it is the most thoroughly researched biography ever written of any Hindi litterateur. In fact, rarely has any writer been the subject of a biography of such epic proportions in the wider Indian literature. Mukul spent several years in writing the book and has scoured all possible sources from across the world looking for authentic facts and references.

Such refinement and perseverance are rare in Hindi. Very few biographies meet the standard in terms of authenticity, detail and due diligence to facts and data. Penguin is soon going to publish the Hindi translation of this colossal biography. For almost four decades, Agyeya was a towering figure in modern Hindi literature. He was the most controversial Hindi writer during his lifetime. Countless rumors were spread about his personal life. Akshaya Mukul must have been cognizant of them too. But he has related the story of Agyeya’s life in a very objective manner based on references and documents. His narrative flows like an articulate novel and there is almost no room for boredom or quirks in it.

Another little-known romantic liaison between Agyeya and Kripa Sen is probably Akshaya’s discovery and, therefore, Agyeya has been appropriately designated as a lover in the book’s title. Besides, Agyeya did write some poignant love poems too.

The book contains a detailed account of Agyeya’s early life, his life in prison and his own advocacy of the court case. The arguments and facts presented by Agyeya in his defense gave a glimpse into his future: it was clear that he would challenge social and political norms.

To those who continuously accuse Agyeya of being an aristocrat and of staying away from the masses, the biography explains in detail how the writer had a close association with, for instance, the peasant movement. Later, he, along with Renu, continuously covered the plight of the farmers and the failures of the administration during the Bihar famine.

Agyeya was almost always short of money because he had opted for writing as a profession at a time when most writers in Hindi literature received very little, sometimes even nil, remuneration. Popular novels like  Shekhar  earned him a miniscule amount in royalties from Saraswati Press. Therefore, Agyeya’s insistence on being remunerated for his lectures later in his career makes sense.

It is also worth noting that when he started receiving some money, for instance, from the Jnanpith Award, he ventured to form a trust with twice the prize money and spent it on other writers. Agyeya was probably the first Hindi writer to do so.

Agyeya’s association with the Congress for Cultural Freedom was at the centre of another controversy. While the affiliation is a fact, it is also true that many of the world’s renowned writers at the time had such connections. Earlier, Agyeya had organised a major conference along with progressive writers against fascism. Freedom and self-respect were values on which he never compromised. This biography attests to this notion.

The literature, thought, and ideological pursuit of Agyeya do not prove his pro-Americanism. Moreover, if it was justified to receive financial aid from the then Soviet Union to publish books at cheap prices and to receive the Soviet Land Award, then any American aid should also be justified. Ironically, both the camps were ignoring the Soviet genocide at the time and the US involvement in the subsequent Vietnam and Korea wars and genocide.

The biography also reminds me of a personal incident which I had almost forgotten. My correspondence and communication with Agyeya started when I was 18 years old. During one such correspondence, when he had not even turned 50, Agyeya once expressed his desire to stop writing.

I registered my protest against such a desire and wrote to him that it would be unfortunate and a great loss. I even suggested that Agyeya should publish a new collection of poems and include in it a lengthy essay on his poetic experiences, problems faced by contemporary poets and ‘Nai Kavita’ or modern poetry.

I even dared to write that Nirmal Verma and Raghuveer Sahay were the most authentic representatives of modern fiction ( nai kahani ) and modern poetry at the time. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Agyeya preserved this correspondence while I lost the letters I had received from him.

Another aspect of Agyeya emerges from this biography: his connection and interaction with many active members across generations during his time. He also supported many writers in due course. There have also been controversies regarding writer-camps organised by Vatsal Nidhi. Akshay Mukul has carefully scrutinised them contextually and studied the discussions held.

For decades, many left-wing writers have been condemning the stalwart as right-wing, anti-people, and what not. This biography makes it clear that unlike most leftists, Agyeya spent three years in prison for participating in the freedom movement. He remained associated with minor movements thereafter. He never adopted any pro-government, anti-people stance while he was the editor of  Dinaman  and  Nav Bharat Times . Rather, he was democratic and critical of the government and supported Jayaprakash Narayan in his massive and decisive mass movement.

He shared long dialogues with Muktibodh and in  Naya Prateek  had even condemned the attack on Harishankar Parsai by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh goons.

If one reads this biography with a broad outlook, one will intimately envisage the struggle of Agyeya’s life, his self-respect and dignity as an author, and his authentic, though somewhat obscure, existence.

Ashok Vajpeyi is a well-known Hindi poet-critic and art lover.  

Originally  published  in Hindi, this piece was translated by Nausheen.

READ FURTHER: 

HERE'S AN ANOTHER ARTICLE BY KULDEEP KUMAR FROM THE WIRE

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Book review: ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya’ by Akshaya Mukul

Written By: Ashutosh Kumar Thakur

| Published on: Feb 1, 2023

The biography of Agyeya – ‘Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya’ by author Akshaya Mukul, which was released in July 2022, chronicles his transformation from “a revolutionary youth to a very controversial patron-saint of Hindi writing.”

In 2015, Akshaya Mukul wrote the multi-award-winning book “Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India.”

Author Akshaya Mukul successfully presented Agyeya’s public, private, and secret lives in the book with no holds barred. It also covers Hindi literature from colonial times to Nehruvian India and beyond. What Akshaya Mukul has done is read and investigate the clues to his life that Agyeya has left behind in his works, giving us a truly unique perspective on a man who contributed tremendously to the world of words and ideas.

Along the way, we get a rare peek into the factionalism and pettiness of the Hindi literary world of the twentieth century, and the wondrous and grand debates which characterized that milieu. The factional battles in the Hindi society and Agyeya’s quest into civilisation are equally as exciting as the era he lived in.

Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan (March 7, 1911 – April 4, 1987), popularly known by his pen name ‘Agyeya’ was a remarkable Indian writer, poet, novelist, literary critic, journalist, translator and revolutionary in Hindi language. His monumental novel ‘Shekhar: Ek Jeevani’, widely regarded as his masterpiece, was drawn from his own experiences in prison.  He also pioneered modern trends in Hindi poetry, as well as in fiction, criticism, and journalism. With his unwavering contribution for Hindi, he is regarded as the pioneer of the Prayogavaad (experimentalism) movement in modern Hindi literature.

Son of a renowned archaeologist Hiranand Sastri, Agyeya was born in Kasia, a small town near Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. He took active part in the Indian freedom struggle and spent several years in prison for his revolutionary activities against British colonial rule.

Agyeya, a pioneer of modern Hindi literature, developed a brand-new narrative language that articulated a remarkable poetics of exaggeration, transgression, and sarcasm. How Agyeya edited remarkable the Saptak series which gave rise a new trend in Hindi poetry, known as Nayi Kavita. He also edited several literary journals, and launched his own Hindi language weekly Dinaman, which set new standard and trends in Hindi journalism. Agyeya translated some of his own works, as well as works of some other Indian authors to English along with translated some books of world literature into Hindi . Akshaya Mukul narrated extremely well about the life and work of Agyeya in the book.

‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ is an unfinished Hindi-language novel by Agyeya. Published in two parts, with a third part that has yet to see the light of day, ‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ is semi-biographical in nature and is considered to be Agyeya’s magnum opus and also considered a unique and landmark work in Hindi literature. The experimental nature of the novel gave it attention, and many critics recognized it as the first psychoanalytical novel of Hindi literature due to its focus on thematising the gap between the external world and internal states.

It is essential to know that Agyeya started writing ‘Shekhar: Ek Jivani’ when he was imprisoned for his rebellious activities against the British colonial government, in particular, for his participation in the attempt to help Bhagat Singh, a leader of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, to escape from jail in 1929. He wrote the first draft of the novel after being arrested, where he contemplated writing about his life before he would be executed. The first part was published after four redrafts, and the second was released in 1944. The third part, which Agyeya said he had written, never appeared.

Akshaya Mukul gave clear and lucid account in the book that Agyeya, had a wonderful understanding of the civilisational roots of the country and was the modern voice of the genius of India. Agyeya had no predecessors in Hindi, and he decided to depart the dominant mode of realism and explore reality in non-realistic, sometimes surrealistic ways. From his revolutionary youth to acquiring the mantle of a (highly controversial) patron saint of Hindi literature, Agyeya’s turbulent life also tells a history of the Hindi literary world and of a new nation-spanning as it does two world wars, Independence and Partition, and the building and fraying of the Nehruvian state. Agyeya firmly believed that language in literature does not merely reflect reality but also, more significantly, creates it. A tireless experimentalist, in fiction, poetry and editing, Agyeya created a larger geography of empathy.

The book ‘ Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya ’ also features a formidable cast of characters: from writers like Premchand, Phanishwarnath Renu, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Josephine Miles to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad, and actor Balraj Sahni. And its landscapes stretch from British jails, an intellectually robust Allahabad and modern-day Delhi to monasteries in Europe, the homes of Agyeya’s friends in the Himalayas and universities in the US. This book is a magnificent examination of Agyeya’s civilizational enterprise.

Author Akashaya Mukul looks at the scattered elements of Agyeya’s life as ingredients that went into the making of the writer the book observes and records the influence of Agyeya’s lived experiences, the places he habited, the people he associated with, and the books he read in his stories, poems, and novels.

Based on never-seen-before archival material-including a mammoth trove of private papers, documents of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom and colonial records of his years in jail-the book delves deep into the life of the nonconformist poet-novelist. Akshaya Mukul’s comprehensive and unflinching biography is a journey into Agyeya’s public, private and secret lives.

Mukul also reveals Agyeya’s revolutionary life and bomb-making skills, his CIA connection, a secret lover, his intense relationship with a first cousin, the trajectory of his political positions, from following MN Roy to exploring issues dear to the Hindu right, and much more. Agyeya’s journey from a young revolutionary to a patron saint of Hindi literature is extensively explored in the book.

This is a work of intense analysis and considered excavation a contemplation on Agyeya’s oeuvre and its place in world literature. Through this book, readers will get an insider’s look into the life of an eminent writer. Ambitious and scholarly, Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover is also an unputdownable, whirlwind of a read.

Book Name: Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya by Akshaya Mukul Published by: Penguin Vintage Book MRP: ₹999.00

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About Ashutosh Kumar Thakur

Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a Bengaluru-based management professional, curator, and literary critic. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Akshaya Mukul – “Your job as a biographer is to dig and document, not to judge”

Winner of the ₹15 lakh kamaladevi chattopadhyay nif book prize 2023, akshaya mukul, author, writer, rebel, soldier, lover: the many lives of agyeya, talks about his biography of sachchidanand hirananda vatsyayan, a towering figure in hindi literature.

How does it feel to win this prize? What kind of reception were you hoping for while writing the book?

When your work gets recognized by such a prestigious prize, it is an occasion to celebrate. I had expected people who read Hindi literature to take an interest in my book but I am pleasantly surprised to see a positive response from readers of diverse backgrounds. I suppose this is because my book is not only a biography of Agyeya as a writer but also a history of the times he lived in. That covers the colonial period when India was under British rule, the first and the second World War, the Partition of the subcontinent, Independence, also the high point and the decline of the Nehruvian era.

You have made a lot of revelations about Agyeya’s personal life in this book. Might this affect how readers see his work? Or do you believe that people are able to separate the art from the artist?

Frankly, I don’t know where one ends and the other begins especially in the case of a man like Agyeya. His life and his literature are so deeply enmeshed! I have tried to dispel many myths about him, based on my archival research, but we must stay open to the possibility that other researchers might unearth new material in future and write an even better book on Agyeya. My objective was to humanize him, and I hope his books continue to sell a lot and find new readers.

Are there any plans to have the biography translated into Hindi?

Yes, Abhishek Srivastav is translating the book from English to Hindi. Penguin India will publish it sometime this year.

In the book, you write about an intriguing publishing model that Agyeya used while editing Tar Saptak , the anthology credited with ushering in the Nayi Kavita movement in Hindi literature. All the contributors were expected to contribute funds towards publication. Was this common in those times, or was he experimenting?

It was a troubled time for writers, so Agyeya wanted to try out this new model. He faced some resistance at first but it worked out eventually. I am glad you asked me this because the Hindi publishing industry has a larger crisis that needs to be fixed. Publishers are known for being oppressive. This is not a thing of the distant past. Two years ago, even a veteran author like Vinod Kumar Shukla had to put out a video and go public with his grievances because he was shortchanged and taken for a ride by his publishers.

You point out that, prior to Tar Saptak , most Hindi poets were influenced by the oral tradition so they wrote poetry that was meant to be heard and not read. Were the new poets writing differently because of what they were reading? Any other reasons?

Five of the seven poets included in Tar Saptak were Marxists. They were highly political. Their concerns were different from poets of previous generations. They were reading literature from all over the world. They were not interested in singing the glories of the past. They wrote about contemporary issues and crises that they wanted to address. Agyeya’s own reading, by the time he was 20, was remarkably eclectic. He read British, Russian and German writers.

What drew Agyeya to TS Eliot’s writing?

Agyeya was interested in Eliot’s poems as well as long essays. He was also fascinated with Eliot’s attempts to understand Eastern and Western philosophical traditions.

What made Agyeya turn to Sigmund Freud’s work and engage with it?

Agyeya wanted to probe into the inner worlds of his characters, and there were autobiographical aspects in some of the fiction that Agyeya wrote – certainly his novel Shekhar: Ek Jivani . This made Freud’s work with psychoanalysis very exciting for him. Agyeya admitted to being influenced.

Why did critics of Agyeya’s work try to get Tar Saptak banned?

People who hated his guts for being experimental had grudges against him, so they wrote biased reviews. Some of the poems in the collection were called obscene. The criticism was not focused on literary merit. It was moral policing. They were jealous because they thought he was an outsider and they could not handle his success. Though there were attempts to ban the book, it did not get banned thanks to wiser voices who came to Agyeya’s rescue. It is still sold, read and taught. It has stood the test of time.

In a letter that you have quoted in the biography, MN Roy, founder of the Communist Party of India, tells Agyeya: “I am afraid you keep too much to yourself and even inside yourself. That often puts one in blues. You ought to be less esoteric.” What do you think of Roy’s assessment of Agyeya? Why did he struggle to open up?

MN Roy was not the only one who thought that Agyeya was reclusive. A lot of people had this complaint with Agyeya. He spoke little, sometimes just a few words or sentences, even if someone sat with him for a whole hour. This was interpreted as a sign of arrogance. He preferred to listen. He was not fond of small talk. He was well-read and widely travelled, had a cosmopolitan education, and his father was an archaeologist. Agyeya was very different from other Hindi writers of his generation. They used to consider him elitist but he was often misunderstood. If you read his correspondence with the younger writers he mentored, you get to see his funny and compassionate side. He was quite good with children too. He liked playing with them, and was also keen to write books for children.

Tell us about Agyeya’s relationship with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. According to your research, Agyeya worked on a hagiographic volume to mark Nehru’s 60th birthday, and a lot of people turned down the invitation to write about Nehru. How did Agyeya get this assignment in the first place?

Nehru was Agyeya’s personal hero. Knowing about this deep fondness, I think Agyeya must have jumped at the opportunity. It was a pretty well-brought-out volume, in terms of writing quality and production quality, even though many people gave Agyeya a really hard time when he approached them to write. They came up with excuses, or rejected him outright since they didn’t like Nehru. Agyeya was committed to the project. He was constantly looking for work, and this volume must have kept him busy for at least a year. He had a long history of abandoning things that he had taken up but he didn’t give up on this, perhaps because of Nehru. By the way, Nehru wrote a rather glowing and indulgent foreword to Agyeya’s first English book of poems. Of course, Agyeya was chuffed.

How did your approach towards Agyeya evolve while researching and writing?

My work with archival material showed me that Agyeya has been a victim of those who love him and have turned him into a god-like being, and those who hate him and have turned him into the biggest villain ever. The archives helped me get past these extremes of reverence and vilification. I was able to appreciate the fact that he was a great writer and also a petty person in some of his relationships. At times, he could get so carried away by his ambition that he didn’t think twice before walking over other people. But he was also generous in his role as a mentor to some younger writers. Working on this biography gave me a chance to see him in his best and worst moments. And I have attempted to humanize him in the light of facts.

What advice would you give someone who is venturing out to write a biography?

Maintain a healthy distance from your subject. Write chronologically if you can. Don’t brush anything under the carpet. State the facts even if they are unpalatable. The truth won’t take away from the greatness of your subject. It will ground your work in reality. Your job as a biographer is to dig and document, not to judge. Having some degree of fascination with your subject might help but don’t make the mistake of falling in love.

To what extent did your training as a journalist help you follow these guidelines?

Having worked in journalism for 20 years was the best training that I could have got. I knew that it was important to verify details, and not go by hearsay. I could see gaps easily when I reminded myself to ask the five Ws (what, where, who, when, why) and one H – How? It is hard to go wrong if you follow these fundamentals of journalism.

Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, journalist and book reviewer.

• Hindi Literature

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